State police to receive pay increase

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana State Police troopers will get a pay raise ranging from 20 percent for beginning recruits to 1.75 percent for top level positions, Gov. Mitch Daniels announced Friday during a graduation ceremony for 36 new members of the force.\nNew recruits' starting annual salaries will rise from $31,408 to $37,708, an increase of $6,300. The raise percentage will be lower the longer troopers have served, said State Police Deputy Superintendent Larry Larkin.\nThe raises were to be funded from money the state plans to get from leasing the Indiana Toll Road to a private, foreign consortium. They were set higher at the front end in hopes of recruiting more troopers. The state has 1,095 troopers but wants to add 210 more throughout the next 18 months.\n"We will never be able to compensate you adequately for the services you provide or the risks that you will take to protect the rest of us, but we will do our best. We are determined to," Daniels told recruits and others who packed the north atrium of the Statehouse for the graduation ceremony.\nLarkin said the raises will bring the starting pay closer to an average of about $41,400 for first-year troopers in Indiana's four surrounding states.\n"It is a very, very competitive market," Larkin said.